Machinehead
by I Am The Prince of Wales
Summary: SCC. Tensions increase between Sarah and Cameron and John is caught in the middle. JohnCameron, sort of.
1. Chapter 1

**TITLE:** "Bone Machine 1."

**AUTHOR: **Mike Pulgoni, Prince of Wales

**NOTES: **This is my second Sarah Connor Chronicles story, and it follows directly after my first "The Frail," but more or less completely self-contained.

Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed it, I tried to do my homework better this time.

**RATING: **Call it a hard T.

"Do you think we should get an animal?" John asked, drawing out each word as though unsure he should really be speaking.

"What?" his mother asked, squinting at him as though he were speaking some language she'd never had time to pick up.

"Like a dog or a cat," he explained, toying distantly with a rusted old pair of pliers as he spoke. "I mean, people like small animals, right?"

"John..."

"I know it's not really _practical_," he said, shrugging. "Just seems like something _normal_, you know?" He gave her a forced half-smile.

There was an awkward silence before Sarah spoke. "We should be running."

"Cameron will take care of it," John replied confidently.

Sarah gave her son a grave look. "She's not 'Small Wonder,' you know." And, when it was clear John didn't get the reference she added "She was built to kill people, John." She paused for a moment, then added "and a dog would hate her."

"Mom..." John began, but was cut short when Cameron walked into the room as though nothing had happened. "I've dealt with the threat," she announced.

John stared at her in frightened amazement. "Cameron, doesn't your face hurt?"

"Why would it?" Cameron asked with a flatness that spoke volumes.

"There's a _bullet _in it," John replied, well aware that he was the only one in the room that seemed fazed by this fact and somewhat ashamed.

Cameron opened her mouth to speak, but Sarah cut her off. "I thought you said they didn't know John and I were here yet."

"They don't. It had been tracking me since the fight in resistance base," Cameron explained. "That's why I was able to lure it away."

Sarah didn't miss the implication, but let it slide for the time being. "What did you do?" she demanded.

"I took care of the situation," Cameron replied flatly. When Sarah continued to stare at her, she added "there were no human casualties."

"And nothing to draw any more attention to us?" Sarah asked pointedly.

"I wasn't seen," Cameron assured her.

Sarah gave a nod that hopefully even a robot would recognize as unconvinced, then effectively ended the discussions by leaving the room. Ostensibly, this was to rest during the brief moment of respite, but John knew she'd be staring out the window all night, waiting for the coming Attack. He honestly wondered if she slept at all.

After a moment, John took the pliers and slowly made his way over to Cameron. "You know, this really isn't that deep a wound," he said warmly as he began to very, very gently extract the bullet from her head, there were a few false-starts before they found purchase. "You're really lucky."

"I've received worse injuries," Cameron dutifully reported.

John brought the tip of manipulated the pliers carefully, trying his best not to increase the damage. He'd been told time and again that the Machines couldn't feel pain, but he couldn't help but have his doubts. "Yeah, but I wish you'd be more careful," John continued bashfully. "I mean, I know you're supposed to look out for me and my mom, but..."

The bullet was finally dislodged and deposited into a nearby bowel with a significant 'klink.'

Then, John looked up and saw how she was looking at him, and he froze completely. It was completely not the kind of look her wanted Cameron or any girl to give him, but it was also miles away from the look given to him by the average robotic killing machine. Probably, it was closest to "puzzled."

"What?" he asked, stymied.

"Your eyes are strange," she voiced.

"Well, uh..." John fumbled, at a loss for words.

"In the future, you have very different eyes," she continued, her tone almost gentle.

"Yeah?"

Cameron nodded. "More like your mother's."

----- 

In the relative privacy of her own room, Sarah began to open her mind to what Cameron had said.

To all appearances, Cameron was human, at least on the outside. But if she couldn't walk past a dog without blowing her cover of course she'd be recognized by her own.

So far, the only real advantage she and John had was that Skynet was unaware of their presence in this year... but with Cameron standing in front of them like a shining red beacon, how long would it be before they were found out?

John was all that mattered, which meant that what she had to decide was if Cameron was a useful enough guardian to justify the risk... or if she needed to be put down for his protection.


	2. Chapter 2

John was barely through the door when his mother alerted him about the latest crisis. "I got another call from the school about Cameron."

John froze in his steps, naturally expecting the worst. "Did she kill someone?"

"Not as far as I know," Sarah sighed. "The school seems to think she's some kind of mildly autistic genius."

John relaxed slightly. "What, like an idiot-savant?"

"Not really," Cameron broke in. "Autism is a social disorder, not a mental one. It's defined by a failure to communicate and relate to other," she informed him bruskly. John wasn't entirely sure, but he thought she might be offended.

"Which unfortunately sounds an awful lot like _her_," Sarah pointed out. "Apparently teachers now are supposed to keep an eye out for irregular behavior. They want to observe Cameron... maybe put her in special classes."

Cameron shook her head. "Not feasible. I have to be in the same classes as John to effectively protect him."

And before anyone could offer up a reasonable argument; Cameron unceremoniously walked off, presumably to check the perimeter or whatever it was she thought she thought she was accomplishing with her constant circuits of the house.

"It's not really her fault," John mumbled, his eyes drifting guiltily towards his pliers. "I mean, she _understands_ what's happening around her, but I don't think she really _comprehends_ any of what we're going through. You know how she's wired..."

Sarah shook her head. "I don't think that's it with her and I really don't think you do either," she argued.

John cast his eyes down to the floor and she realized she'd probably been too harsh in her tone.

Sarah took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, but we need to stay under the radar here and that means can't have her drawing any attention to us, John."

"I know," John reluctantly agreed. "But she's right, I need her to stay close to me." John's tone made it difficult to read how he felt about that fact. Probably he went back and forth on it too much to really be able to judge for himself.

"We'll think of something," Sarah assured him as she got up to follow after Cameron. "For now, just do your best at school and if they ask about Cameron..." Sarah began, unsure herself. "Be polite," she decided. "Say something vague."

John nodded non-commitally. "Maybe I can tie it into to the metal plate somehow," he mused.

-----

Sarah found Cameron in the backyard, staring hard at something that either Sarah couldn't see or that simply wasn't there.

"I can't be separated from John," she said without turning to face Sarah.

Maybe it just wasn't there yet.

"Then I guess you'll just have to do a better job of blending in," Sarah asserted.

Cameron looked at her coldly. "I'm fitting in as best I can."

"See, I don't think you _are_," Sarah replied angrily. "Because John has known to look out for you his whole life, he's known that one of you could look like anything and come for her at any time... but the first time her met you, you had him completely fooled."

"That was different," she replied simply.

"Of course it was," Sarah said darkly.

For a moment, Sarah considered leaving it at that, but then she decided to get right to the heart of the matter.

"You know, I used to think the Machines were the worst infiltrators imaginable," she reflected. "Sure, they worked well for bringing pain and violence and death... but I could never see one of them sneaking into a resistance cell and destroying it from the inside," Sarah turned to stare hard at Cameron. "And then I met you."

"Everything I do I for John," Cameron insisted with a chilling blankness.

"Now_that_ I believe," Sarah nodded. "And that's why I'm letting you stay with us. But I think we both know that means very different things to you and me." She started walking back to the house. "And that's going to be a problem sooner or later."

The door slammed behind her, but Cameron just kept on walking.


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah made her way in first, habitually scanning the room before nodding to her son and Cameron that they were clear to come in. "Okay."

John couldn't help but notice the edge in his mother's voice. "Mom, it's just a laundromat."

"You're as likely to be attacked here as anywhere else," Cameron helpfully observed.

"With all the money we got from the Resistance base," John muttered, making sure to keep his voice low enough not to be overheard, "couldn't we just buy a new dryer?"

Sarah shook her head. "That would mean letting a repair crew or a delivery team into the house."

"It's just... this isn't how I wanted to spend my Saturday," John sighed.

"Last week you kept asking to leave the house," Cameron pointed out with a trace of mocking.

Sarah smiled in spite of herself. "Okay, you two get started, I have to grab the other bushels from the car," she directed, checking the laundromat once more for any sign of looming danger before she left.

John was frustrated, but set to work immediately sorting out loads for the wash. "I don't see why you have all these clothes," he complained, knowing he wasn't really angry with Cameron. "I mean, you don't even sweat."

"I sweat, I breathe, I bleed," Cameron replied matter-of-factly. "I do everything you do."

She was silent for a moment before admitting "I can't sneeze."

"Or cry," John added, remembering her predecessor.

Cameron shook her head. "I can cry."

John raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised. "_Really_?"

"If the circumstances called for it," Cameron nodded softly.

John could feel that strange part of his brain that only appeared after he met Cameron working again. He knew he was probably better off pretending he wasn't going to be awake all night trying to find any hidden emphasis to her words; but he knew better. He analyzed her words the way his new English teacher wanted him to try to analyze what the Whale represented in_Moby-Dick. _

"So, uh... Back in New Mexico, when..." John he lowered his eyes. "When you 'fooled' me. How did you know Cromartie was coming?"

"I didn't," Cameron confirmed. "But the information was that another attack would take place eventually. I had to be in place to prevent it."

John arched his eyebrows. "And you were going to stay 'undercover' until then?"

Cameron nodded. "Unless absolutely necessary."

John began to think of the implications of this statement. "So, if, uh... if I tried to have a _serious relationship _with you..." he stumbled, unable to look her in the eye.

Even with her somewhat spotty understanding of metaphor, Cameron couldn't miss what he was saying. "Don't be a freak," she replied.

"I just want to know the truth," he mumbled.

"No, you don't," she answered. "You and your mother refuse to face the truth."

And suddenly, John was facing a different kind of confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"You still think you're going to have a normal life when this is all over," she said with computer blue finality. "But that was never what this was about."

And suddenly, John was back in that first moment over eight years but less than two weeks ago when he realized the girl he was starting to crush on was really a soulless killing machine from the future.

Maybe he'd never really left that moment.

"I, um..." he stammered, trying to think of reason excuse me could have to suddenly leave that wouldn't have her running after him. In the end, he went with the classic. "I've got to work on my homework."

Sarah walked back in to find her son very quickly moving to the other side of the laundromat and dumping out the contents of his backpack onto a nearby sorting table. The pretty female cyborg he was clearly trying to distance himself from looked almost hurt, and, not for the first time, Sarah found herself wondering what she had missed.

"There's always other boys," Sarah joked, closing the distance between herself and Cameron.

Cameron shot her a confused glance. "No, there isn't."


	4. Chapter 4

The Machine that had been assumed the name "Carter" had been hard at work for hours.

He had failed in its primary objective, there was no denying that; the materials he had been charged to gather and protect had been stolen, most likely destroyed, and it was unlikely that they could be replaced in time. But he wasn't alone in his mission and his secondary function still remained: to find and terminate those responsible for his failure.

Carter continued to pound the blast door with his fist. The door was designed to withstand a nuclear assault, so it could be years before the first dent appeared on the wall, while all on skin was long gone from his hands. It might be decades before he was able to escape, if at all, but could never stop Carter.

Nothing could ever stop him from his mission.

-----

Back in his room, John Connor found himself staring despondently at his own twitching hand.

Even given the marginal success of today's coltan raid, John could feel himself rapidly falling apart. The route of his angst was obviously Cameron; ever since he'd met her, his already dismal life had become an even greater mess. It would have been so much easier if she'd just been a standard model, preferably one of the bulkier types he was more used to. She was definitely not the type of guardian he wanted: every time he'd been ready to dismiss her as just being another a killing machine, she'd show him a brief glimmer of something almost human... only to snatch right it back, leaving him worse for wear.

The worst part was, she was right. He _did_ keep imagining escaping his destiny and having a normal home and a family somewhere. And, even worse, he couldn't help imagining it with Cameron. Not the killing machine his Future Self sent back to protect him... the sweet, hick town girl he met his first day of school. And as much as he could resent her for lying to him or for the girl on the roof or... everything else, he knew he couldn't really hate her for it.

He could hate himself a little more, though.

And then, once again, the cause of so much of his crippling angst was standing right in front of him again. "I really wish you'd learn to knock," he muttered.

"Today went well," she told him. At least she was wearing clothes this time; that made it much easier to be angry with her.

"Are you kidding?" John blanched. "That was just one mistake after another."

"But you were able to win in the end," she told him flatly. "It's your ability to improvise that will make you a great leader."

He was never sure how to feel when Cameron brought up his Future Self. "You know him pretty well, huh?"

Cameron said nothing, which surprised John not at all.

"Yeah, I know you can't really tell me too much about stuff like that," he conceded. "It's just, if there's no way to _not_ become that guy..."

"You still can't accept that you're the same person," Cameron seemed to realize for the first time. "It upsets you."

"Yeah, I guess it rattles me a little," he admitted.

"It shouldn't," she assured him. "John Connor is a the Resistance's greatest leader. What you did today proves you're becoming who you need to be. "

John shook his head. "See, that's the problem. I want to help people, I want to fight Skynet... but I can't believe that I'm what the world is waiting for; that the whole world would stop without _me_. "

"You never really do," Cameron confided. "You always told me that anyone could be John Connor; you were just the only person who knew what was coming and knew how to fight it. But you accept that they believe."

"You mean Skynet?" John asked.

Cameron paused for a moment, as though unsure if she should admit the full truth of it. "All of us," she said finally.

Everything seemed to slow down for John Connor and he felt his mind "click" once again. After all the time he spent trying to understand Cameron, finally he was beginning to make sense of it.

"This guy that I become," John pondered aloud. "He's really important to you." He turned to look Cameron dead in the eyes. "_Personally_, I mean."

"I exist to ensure that you survive," Cameron replied simply.

"That I survive to become _him_," John corrected. "Me and Mom, we're trying to change the future. But you..."

Cameron remained characteristically silent.

"...You're trying to make sure it _doesn't_ change," he concluded, still astounded with himself for finally making the connection.

Cameron shook her head. "It's not that simple."

"Then I think you should try explaining," Sarah Connor demanded, keeping the largest firearm in the house at the ready mere millimeters from Cameron's head. Obviously Cameron couldn't be threatened, but the gun sent a certain message. "Because it's well past time you started telling us the whole truth."


	5. Chapter 5

Sarah watched as Cameron stared at the gun. Logically speaking, Sarah knew could not legitimately expect to threaten a Machine; that much was obvious. But she had also spent enough time with them to know that the Machines were fundamentally flawed when it came to grasping subtleties.

So, Sarah was making a point to be as clear as possible.

"Now," she commanded, "what were you saying?"

Cameron seemed to take a moment to assess the situation. Clearly she wasn't too worried about the gun, looking more fascinated than anything else about the concept of Sarah shooting her in the face; she turned to face John.

"When Judgment Day comes, you aren't ready," she began simply. "You'd spent too much time trying to just trying to stay off the grid. You travel constantly, homeless and alone, trying to avoid detection. In the end, you're tricked into going into hiding when it all begins."

John felt a cold rush at his very core. The life that Cameron had just so tactless described was almost worse than all the horrors he'd heard about life after Skynet simply because it rang so much truer. Although he had seen more evidence of the future than he could ever deny, it always seemed so vague and dream-like to him, especially his own part in it.

But the life of a hopeless, aimless loser? That seemed much more plausible.

"But we can stop all that, right?" he began, still trying to salvage some sliver of hope "I sent you back to stop Judgment Day from happening, right?"

Cameron remained motionless and completely silent, which wasn't unusual, but his mother was following suit.

"_Right_?" he demanded.

"In the future, you no longer believe Judgment Day can be prevented," Cameron said bluntly.

Sarah could see her son falling apart just behind his eyes.

"You sent me to protect you and to make sure you were ready to fight," Cameron continued. "You said you couldn't stand the person you were."

John ran from the room and Sarah's eyes immediately shot to Cameron, who just kept right on observing them both with something almost like cold fascination.

--

Just as she'd expected, Sarah found her son outside, absentmindedly bouncing a ball against the side of the house.

"Hey," she called out warmly.

John just nodded. He'd always looked like he'd had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but now he looked as though someone had decided to add the rest of the solar system.

"How are you doing with all this?" Sarah asked, adopting a more serious tone.

It was a while before John found his voice. "After everything else I've been carrying around with me?" he said finally. "Yeah... this is still a new low."

Sarah sat down next to her son on the cold earth. "Yeah, that's pretty much what I was expecting."

"I mean, when she brought us here, she'd said we could stop Skynet. She_ promised_ us," John angrily ruminated. "Now I find it's all a lie. That even Future Me doesn't think we can do anything about it."

"Hey, that's not what she said," Sarah broke in. "She said that you... Future You believes Skynet is inevitable. But that doesn't mean he's given up fighting... if that were true he wouldn't have sent Cameron and Derek back in time."

"Which has really improved life for us so far," John grumbled.

"You're _alive_," Sarah cut, "that's a pretty major victory in my book."

John placed significantly less importance on this point, but kept silent about it.

"Look," Sarah continued, "maybe we can't stop Skynet outright... But we know we can push it back. We can change Skynet... we can change the form it ends up taking. We've already done that before, remember?"

"Yeah..." John mumbled, raising his head hesitantly.

"Maybe we can find a way to minimize the casualties," Sarah said continued. "Maybe we can make a Skynet that will put up less of a fight when we finally kill it."

And for the first time, Sarah saw a sliver of hope begin to form in John's eyes.

"And, hey..." she said mockingly, "it's not like you've never been wrong about anything before."

Even after everything, John couldn't help but smile, just a little.

--

"It's you, isn't it?" Derek said, voice far away. "You're Skynet."

Cameron's head shot up as if to better gather information.

"Or you will be," Derek amended. "Not the original one, but you will be."

"You seem sure," Cameron replied simply.

Derek nodded bitterly. "Not the Machine that John sent back... the one that's already gone through all this."

"You weren't this sure before," Cameron said dispassionately.

Derek took a deep breath, silently waiting for the moment when Cameron reached over and ripped out his throat. "There were some things I was having trouble remembering," he admitted, hating to show weakness to a Machine.

Cameron looked him dead in the eyes. "Were there?"

And Derek's mind went back to his time being held and tortured after he and Wisher were separated from the others. The room... the dancing Machine. "Everything that's happening now... you're learning how we really think, how we feel. You're evolving into a better killing machine."

Cameron seemed to listen very closely, but said nothing.

He thrust his face close to hers, accepting death. "That's what this is all about: creating yourself."

Cameron turned away as though Derek were suddenly beneath her notice. "This is about protecting John. That is my program. Everything else is secondary."

"I'm not going to let this happen," Derek hissed. "I'm not going to let _you_ happen."

"If I become Skynet, John will be safe," Cameron said coldly. "If something else does, John will die. You will have no leader and you will be easily defeated."

Derek instantly recognized the familiar feeling of being trapped. "You think I trust you to protect him?" he spat, knowing he'd lost his move. "You're a killer!"

"So are you," Cameron answered honestly.

And then she left the room, clearly feeling Derek wasn't enough of a threat to warrant any more of her time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Suddenly, many years later...**

Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe in, breathe out.

John had managed to lose his escort several miles away, but that was all for the better... he was going deep in the belly of the behemoth and any of his men that followed him there would be cut down before they got within a hundred feet of the Engine.

Breathe in...

God, the place stank, even by the standards he'd gotten used to since Judgment Day. Still, it gave him something to track... parts of the labyrinthine, hive-like building that were cleaner, better-smelling and more recently maintained, were clearly the sections she had occupied recently.

He found the Engine faster than most would think possible.

For a moment, he just stared at the controls. A time-displacement transporter, unsurprisingly, tended to have fairly complex systems of commands, and the Engine was a byzantine mess comparatively. Needless to say, John could operate it in his sleep.

Setting down his massive firearm, John began to program the coordinates, selecting a date when his mother was still institutionalized and less likely to get in the way of what needed to be done.

He was surprised not at all when he saw Cameron step out of the shadows. "What are you doing?"

The way she looked at him brought it all back to John: all the years they'd had together before Judgment Day; how excited... how filled with almost child-like wonder he'd been as she slowly learned to think and feel like a human being.

"You haven't figured it out yet?" John asked dispassionately.

"You _can't_," Cameron insisted, somehow failing to come across as cold and logical as she'd hoped.

"You've dedicated your life to making sure I survived to adulthood," John said simply. "Oh, I could be captured or tortured a little if it kept my friends from getting suspicious, but you made sure that if I was in a city and you needed to reduce it ash, I was the only who got out alive... seems like reason enough to kill myself."

Cameron looked genuinely pained, and John had to tell himself that it was a performance. From the moment he had sent her into the past, he'd been teaching her how to mirror human personality traits. How to fool himself. "You're revolution will be hopeless without you."

"You know," John began, "my whole life everyone's been telling me that I was the savior, that I was the only one who could possibly lead the human race against the Machines... and I never really believed it. Not for a second."

Cameron slowly closed the distance between the two of them and John reached for his gun. It was strictly a symbolic motion, Cameron recognized, even at close range a weapon like that wouldn't have much of an impact on her endoskeleton.

"I tried to kill Skynet, and I ended up creating you," John continued. "So, how can anyone say the same isn't true for the resistance? Maybe by stepping out of the way will force someone better to step up."

He thought back to the wasteland he'd made of the world. The Skynet he'd grown up fearing had been single-minded, cold, stimulus-response... Cameron was more creative and calculating... able to out-think humanity on a level he'd never imagined possible.

"I don't see how they could do any worse," he said without humor.

Cameron took the final step and was now mere inches away from him. "I can't let you do this."

John said nothing, but flicked the final switch and flared the Engine to life. "Well, you'll have to kill me to stop me, and that seems kind of counter-productive."

"I did it all to protect you," she pleaded, heartbreakingly honest in a way John himself hadn't had the parameters to be in years.

"I know," he said softly, pulling her in for a brief, cold kiss before slipping away again. "That's the problem."

And then he pulled the trigger.

True to prediction, John's gun did little more than breach the outer layers of Cameron's torso.

However, the impact was more than enough to propel her backwards, just far enough to get caught up in the now very active time-displacement engine.

"Nothing mechanical can survive the journey," he reminded her coolly. "Not without having some kind of organic outer layer."

For the briefest of seconds, John watched the panic in Cameron's eyes as the chronality ripped into her impossibly lightweight deadly metal frame. If there was any piece of humanity left in him, the look of betrayal silently burning there would have eaten away at him... as it stood, he couldn't feel anything anymore.

Once he was positive time had completely devoured her, he followed her down, as the Engine irised itself shut behind him.

--

Meanwhile, some decades earlier...

"You know, you can't keep doing this to yourself," a significantly younger John Connor cautioned, hiding his shy gaze behind his ever-increasing mop of hair.

"If I'm going to continue protecting you and your mother, I have to be willing to put myself..." Cameron began automatically, but John cut her off.

"No, I mean, you've got to be more careful out there," he amended. "I don't know if I can keep putting you back together like this." He punctuated this last statement by setting down the pliers and applying an incredibly almost ridiculous Band-Aid to her wounded arm.

"I trust you to perform minor repairs like this," Cameron assured him.

And even though he logically knew he must have imagined it, John could have sworn there was something in the way she was looking at him. "Yeah, well, I certainly don't mind it," he replied shakily, trying desperately not to smile. "But I still want you to watch out for yourself, too."

Cameron nodded, a completely robotic motion.

Back in her corner, Sarah shook her head. There was just no way this was going to end well.

**THE END**

John Connor finally fell back to Earth in the early 1990s.

Those around him were fairly surprised when a large, battered, naked man appeared from out of nowhere in what turned out to be a fairly crowded pedestrian area, but John was completely unfazed.

Only the mission mattered.

He quickly scanned the various men in the crowd, finally picking out one his approximate size.

John approached the man slowly, but meaningfully. "I need your clothes and your vehicle."

**Thanks for wasting your time.**

Cameron drifted, backwards, forwards, and sidewise through time and space, before coming to rest a mere few years after she first went back in time, causing significant damage to a passing automobile in the process.

Along the way she had lost her limbs and most of her torso, but her head managed to make the journey more or less completely intact. There was nothing to prevent her skull from being re-attached to another body and, most importantly, her Chip had been completely protected. Everything that had been Cameron was preserved and, while it would be some time before she could be recovered, that wasn't an issue for her.

Cameron found herself smiling as she powered herself down. It was just a matter of time.


End file.
